Tag: school shooting

In the immediate wake of the Parkland school shooting the students of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were immediate stars. They were passionate, articulate, polished, highly-motivated champions of gun control.

Perhaps there was a little more to the story than just a group of fabulous grieving students?

Kyle Smith on Opinion Laundering:

The reason television has made stars out of Hogg and González is obvious: They are telegenic, sympathetic vehicles for a message media personalities wish they could get away with openly espousing themselves. (“I get so angry talking to these gun nuts,” Piers Morgan said in a revealing moment on British morning television today.) Just as an op-ed editor at a newspaper can showcase his opinions without his name ever appearing in print by his selection of which articles to publish, the TV media keep giving airtime to students like Hogg because they’re saying all of the things the media’s nominally neutral hosts believe but don’t otherwise feel comfortable saying. Katy Tur, George Stephanopoulos, and Wolf Blitzer can’t passionately lecture the audience about why they think gun policy is crazy in this country, so they put the students on camera to say it. They’re simply laundering their opinions through these kids.

David Hines on Astroturfing:

On February 28, BuzzFeed came out with the actual story: Rep. Debbie Wassermann Schultz aiding in the lobbying in Tallahassee, a teacher’s union organizing the buses that got the kids there, Michael Bloomberg’s groups and the Women’s March working on the upcoming March For Our Lives, MoveOn.org doing social media promotion and (potentially) march logistics, and training for student activists provided by federally funded Planned Parenthood.

The president of the American Federation of Teachers told BuzzFeed they’re also behind the national school walkout, which journalists had previously assured the public was the sole work of a teenager. …

What’s striking about all this isn’t the organization. If you start reading books about organizing, it’s clear how it all works. But no journalist covering the story wrote about this stuff for two weeks. Instead, every story was about the Parkland kids being magically effective.

On Twitter, I lost track of the number of bluechecks rhapsodizing over how effective the kids’ organizational instincts were. But organizing isn’t instinctive. It’s skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes really a lot of people. You don’t just get a few magical kids who’re amazing and naturally good at it.

The real tip-off should have been the $500,000 donations from Winfrey and Clooney. Big celebrities don’t give huge money to strangers on a whim. Somebody who knows Winfrey and Clooney called them and asked. But the press’s response was to be ever more impressed with the kids.

This morning, well, actually it started last night, I have been growing increasing annoyed.

If I hear one more “expert”, former agent of some security/LE related government agency, “news” reader, politician, etc. say one more time “if you see it, report it” (last night’s message) I may start throwing things. By the way, the innocuous sounding “say something” admonishment has this morning been twisted to say: someone should have said something and this COULD have been prevented. No it couldn’t. No one knows that.

What is the point of the above comments anyway? Are they saying — it’s the victims’ own fault? This is ludicrous.

The MSM is effectively telling the teenage victims they are to blame for the tragedy that occurred at their school if they did not say something. This is not true, in fact, they, the non-shooters, did nothing wrong. Do the experts and “news” idiots not realize the surviving students are likely “hearing” a message that is saying “You are responsible for the death of your friends”. This is lie, and nothing less than insensitive bullying. Can the “experts” be that stupid? By the way, I haven’t heard evidence that anyone “knew” a tragedy would occur for a “fact” before the event occurred.

And while I am at it, why are they interrogating/interviewing “children” who who have just experienced a terrible traumatic event and are obviously in shock? Have the news personalities no sensitivity to the emotional state of the children and long term potential harm to the teens? That said, I did notice some of the females appeared to have gotten “dressed” for their appearance, and were being interviewed in their “bedrooms”? Did they think it was an audition? By the way, I saw no moms and or dads present during the interviews. It all seemed a little “produced” to me.

This morning, I am hearing that one adult did report internet postings made by a person named Cruz to the FBI. The FBI did what they could, or at least followed up as well as could be done. However, this drum-beat Call for people to watch and report on their neighbors, is spooky to me. Has anyone reading this ever spoken with a person from Cuba about the Neighborhood Youth Groups in Cuba and how they are indoctrinated into watching and informing on friends and family to the government? This entire “say something” message is a slippery slope.

In my opinion, the time to stop tragedies such as this, as much as it is possible to so at all, is long before any gun triggers have been pulled. It begins with a culture that values human life. Human life belongs at the top of a society’s pyramid of values. Not at the bottom somewhere around the “convenient” level.

All that said, there is plenty of time in the weeks to come for Monday-morning quarterbacking this event. Time enough to take advantage of free nationwide advertising of one’s “security” related “expertise”; to sell security services and sign new customers. Time enough to create another new and unneeded school security government agency at the local, state, and federal levels. Time enough to exploit this event and advance political causes.

But the time is not today. Today is the day to mourn and gather family and friends near. Or have we lost all our humanity? It seems every time I turn on the television, I am reminded why I turned it off.